This game has a lot of style and seems to have a lot of substance, but none of it landed for me. It is a narrative heavy game with a narrative that didn't work for me and some cursory gameplay mechanics that are mostly underbaked or just uninteresting.
The story here is of a woman in her 20s returning to a hometown she left for unclear reasons and dealing with the emotional fallout she caused then and that her return has caused now. Simultaneously, she is dealing with an overbearing and disapproving mother and sister and then also generational trauma. The game is trying to say something important here, but it fails for me in a number of ways.
Some interesting and probably realistic depictions of grandmother -> mother -> daughter interactions that just feel very oppressive. I think this is basically the only thing that succeeds, giving you a very good look at this particular interaction and how it affects people. Everything wrapped around it cheapens or undermines it to the extreme for me, or just presents obvious negativity as positive in a way I find hard to reconcile.
The fights. Jala uses emotional attacks against people in the same way her mother and grandmother do. The point here is that generational trauma is bad when pointed at you, but you can use it to bully your friends, I guess? It honestly feels like the parallels are accidental or happenstance or something and it might even be interesting or say something except for...
The resolutions. Everyone you emotionally abuse and treat like shit gives in and becomes your friend (or more than friend) and loves you for it. It is hard to believe this tale of someone having made mistakes, run away, come back and then bullied and berated everyone into thinking she is cool again. This effectively undermines anything the game is trying to say for me and removes the agency (and value of their forgiveness and friendship) that any of the NPCs would otherwise have.
The father. This is the character everyone loves because he is the one rooting for you and letting you fall asleep watching movies with him. I find this trope of accepting, loving father as a port in the storm of dealing with an abusive mother to be extremely toxic. I get that this is a common trope, and he keeps his head down to avoid confrontation, but getting out of the way while your spouse emotionally abuses your children is pretty much in line for me with getting out of the way while your spouse physically abuses your children, no matter how many times he calls his daughter by cute nicknames or gives her an encouraging wave. Like actually just get fucked with that. To be clear, my problem here is not with the realism of the character itself, but with the presentation of it.
The gameplay here is cursory.
The main attraction is turn-based RPG combat, fueled by enemies with some number of mystery vulnerabilities to one of about 5 different debuffs you can inflict. Maybe you can infer which debuff will affect which character by their personality, but at best it just feels like "guess what the writer was thinking."
To make things more interesting (?) you also have a suite of moves that each do more damage to an enemy with a particular debuff already on them. So even if you were going to strategically use the effect of a debuff, the gameplay just pushes you towards putting the debuff on then using your ability that targets that debuff. There isn't really anything of interest either strategically or mechanically here.
Some simple Mario RPG-esque mini games for each attack serve to keep you engaged, but only barely.
The only redeeming part of the gameplay is the cooking game, which uses the same mini-game mechanics from the battle system but applies them to resource management as you follow instructions from your parents on how to make a dish. It is cute and the mini games serve much better in this context to keep things interesting. The only part of the game I sort of liked!
Also, there is a skateboarding minigame that controls terribly, has no real stakes, has a point system that doesn't make sense, and just feels vestigial and pointless.
Visually this game is bright, colorful, and unique. The models and textures are well done, and it has style, though the style itself doesn't particularly appeal to me. It has a lot of wild animations and a ton of variation, though they are strangely poppy and have a ton of really bad interpolation that makes things look very unpolished and bad to me.
This game doesn't work on any level for me. You can definitely see what the team was going for, but the lack of mechanical interest and contradictory narrative and gameplay design just brings the whole thing crashing down.
It is awesome to see this much diversity on every axis -- cultural, sexual orientation, gender identification, etc... It is a real bummer that the game and narrative behind it all is what it is.
The story here is of a woman in her 20s returning to a hometown she left for unclear reasons and dealing with the emotional fallout she caused then and that her return has caused now. Simultaneously, she is dealing with an overbearing and disapproving mother and sister and then also generational trauma. The game is trying to say something important here, but it fails for me in a number of ways.
Some interesting and probably realistic depictions of grandmother -> mother -> daughter interactions that just feel very oppressive. I think this is basically the only thing that succeeds, giving you a very good look at this particular interaction and how it affects people. Everything wrapped around it cheapens or undermines it to the extreme for me, or just presents obvious negativity as positive in a way I find hard to reconcile.
The fights. Jala uses emotional attacks against people in the same way her mother and grandmother do. The point here is that generational trauma is bad when pointed at you, but you can use it to bully your friends, I guess? It honestly feels like the parallels are accidental or happenstance or something and it might even be interesting or say something except for...
The resolutions. Everyone you emotionally abuse and treat like shit gives in and becomes your friend (or more than friend) and loves you for it. It is hard to believe this tale of someone having made mistakes, run away, come back and then bullied and berated everyone into thinking she is cool again. This effectively undermines anything the game is trying to say for me and removes the agency (and value of their forgiveness and friendship) that any of the NPCs would otherwise have.
The father. This is the character everyone loves because he is the one rooting for you and letting you fall asleep watching movies with him. I find this trope of accepting, loving father as a port in the storm of dealing with an abusive mother to be extremely toxic. I get that this is a common trope, and he keeps his head down to avoid confrontation, but getting out of the way while your spouse emotionally abuses your children is pretty much in line for me with getting out of the way while your spouse physically abuses your children, no matter how many times he calls his daughter by cute nicknames or gives her an encouraging wave. Like actually just get fucked with that. To be clear, my problem here is not with the realism of the character itself, but with the presentation of it.
The gameplay here is cursory.
The main attraction is turn-based RPG combat, fueled by enemies with some number of mystery vulnerabilities to one of about 5 different debuffs you can inflict. Maybe you can infer which debuff will affect which character by their personality, but at best it just feels like "guess what the writer was thinking."
To make things more interesting (?) you also have a suite of moves that each do more damage to an enemy with a particular debuff already on them. So even if you were going to strategically use the effect of a debuff, the gameplay just pushes you towards putting the debuff on then using your ability that targets that debuff. There isn't really anything of interest either strategically or mechanically here.
Some simple Mario RPG-esque mini games for each attack serve to keep you engaged, but only barely.
The only redeeming part of the gameplay is the cooking game, which uses the same mini-game mechanics from the battle system but applies them to resource management as you follow instructions from your parents on how to make a dish. It is cute and the mini games serve much better in this context to keep things interesting. The only part of the game I sort of liked!
Also, there is a skateboarding minigame that controls terribly, has no real stakes, has a point system that doesn't make sense, and just feels vestigial and pointless.
Visually this game is bright, colorful, and unique. The models and textures are well done, and it has style, though the style itself doesn't particularly appeal to me. It has a lot of wild animations and a ton of variation, though they are strangely poppy and have a ton of really bad interpolation that makes things look very unpolished and bad to me.
This game doesn't work on any level for me. You can definitely see what the team was going for, but the lack of mechanical interest and contradictory narrative and gameplay design just brings the whole thing crashing down.
It is awesome to see this much diversity on every axis -- cultural, sexual orientation, gender identification, etc... It is a real bummer that the game and narrative behind it all is what it is.
Spinnerweb
2 months ago